Alzheimer’s disease claims tens of thousands of American lives each year. A positive diagnosis, of the disease, is a process of eliminating all other possible causes with an incorrect diagnosis estimated to occur 10% of the time. It is only after someone dies can a pathologists examine slices of the brain under a microscope to positively identify the disease.

Eugene Hanlon, researcher, Bedford, Massachusetts, and collaborators at Harvard Medical School/Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Boston University, have developed a way to examine living brain tissue with near-infrared light to detect signs of Alzheimer’s disease.

For several years the researchers looked at the possibility of analyzing the brain with near-infrared light. Near-infrared light safely passes through the skull, then scatters. It is how the near-infrared light scatters that indicates the presence of Amyloid plaques–a telltale sign of Alzheimer’s disease.